VTEK Small Talk Plus
: A specialized, early portable productivity solution built as an expansion module for the Epson HX-20 laptop. It used the SSI-263 to provide audible screen-reading capabilities for visually impaired users.
Who wrote it: Douglas Geoffray and Jeremy Ford at Computer Aids Corp in Fort Wayne. The unit even says "Computer Aids Corp, Fort Wayne Indiana" at boot. Geoffray later wrote the Sounding Board and SpeakOut software at GW Micro, also in Fort Wayne. So Small Talk's text-to-speech is very likely an early ancestor of the SpeakOut rules. Who could even dig up a firmware or file for this thing.